The present invention relates to a shower-mountable slide bar, and in particular such a slide bar carrying a height-adjustable showerhead support bracket.
Fixed showerheads typically extend from a shower wall and direct a spray into the shower enclosure. Handheld showerheads provide for greater versatility. Some handheld showerheads are removably mountable on a support bracket mounted on the shower wall, and can thus be used as a “fixed” showerhead, or can be removed from the bracket by the user and handheld to direct the shower spray as desired.
Unfortunately, when the user wanted the handheld showerhead to function as a fixed showerhead, the height of the directed spray was also fixed. A fixed spray optimally directed to shower an adult would not be optimized for a child. As a result, brackets for such devices were developed that were slidably mounted to vertically extending rails (or slide bars) such that the vertical position of the bracket, and corresponding showerhead, could be set by the user. See e.g. U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,271,543; 5,265,833; 5,632,049; 6,453,486; and 6,802,089.
Such brackets typically include a releasable locking mechanism that can be disengaged by the user to adjust the spray head position, and subsequently reengaged to lock the spray head position. Unfortunately, some of these conventional slide bars are difficult to install on a shower wall, and/or the support brackets are difficult to use, are ergonomically deficient, and/or are complex to manufacture and assemble.
A need thus exists for a slide bar for a handshower that can be easily installed into a shower wall, and have a bracket slidably mounted to the bar whose position along the bar can more easily be adjusted and locked by the user.